{"id":20087,"date":"2015-10-08T13:25:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-08T17:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/?page_id=20087"},"modified":"2026-05-18T13:43:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T17:43:22","slug":"2015-university-lecture","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/awards-publications\/lecture\/2015-university-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"2015 University Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Sacred Waters:\u00a0Historical Ecology, Power,\u00a0and the Soul of the Blue Nile<br \/>\n<\/strong><b><br \/>\nPresented by\u00a0James C. McCann, Professor of History and Associate Director for Development at the African Studies Center<br \/>\n<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/provost\/files\/2015\/10\/James-McCann-e1444318403677.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"143\" height=\"175\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-20090\" \/><strong><\/strong><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>James C. McCann is Professor of History and Associate Director for Development at the\u00a0African Studies Center at Boston University. Professor McCann\u2019s research and teaching interests include agricultural and ecological history of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, field research methods in African studies, the agro-ecology of tropical disease, and the history of food\/cuisine in Africa and the Atlantic world.<\/p>\n<p>He is the author of six widely acclaimed books including, most recently, <em>The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia: Deposing the Spirit<\/em> (2015), alongside dozens of articles and reviews in premier journals spanning issues of famine, agriculture, cuisine and environmental history. His 2010 book <em>Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine<\/em> won a 2011 &#8220;Best in the World&#8221; award from Paris&#8217; <em>Gourmand<\/em> Magazine, while 2006&#8217;s <em>Maize and Grace: A History of Africa&#8217;s Encounter with a New World Crop <\/em>received the George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History.<\/p>\n<p>Professor McCann was a 2012\u20132013 John S. Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and in 2012\u20132013 was a Fulbright Fellow in Ethiopia (during which he wrote his latest book). He was named the 2014 Distinguished Scholar by the American Society of Environmental History and elected as a Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Science.<\/p>\n<p>The recipient of numerous prestigious federal and private foundation grants to support his research, Professor McCann has been invited to lecture or consult for a host of international universities and foreign aid organizations, including OXFAM, UNICEF, and American Jewish World Service, and to give testimony before England&#8217;s House of Commons and the U.S. Congress.<\/p>\n<p>Professor McCann served for five years as Principal Investigator of a Rockefeller Foundation research project in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health, exploring the agro-ecology of the cultivation of maize and malaria transmission in Africa. His current project on historical watershed ecologies with the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future involves the establishment of an ecological science of CHANS (Coupled Human and Natural Systems).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sacred Waters:\u00a0Historical Ecology, Power,\u00a0and the Soul of the Blue Nile Presented by\u00a0James C. McCann, Professor of History and Associate Director for Development at the African Studies Center James C. McCann is Professor of History and Associate Director for Development at the\u00a0African Studies Center at Boston University. Professor McCann\u2019s research and teaching interests include agricultural and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5321,"featured_media":0,"parent":987,"menu_order":12,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20087"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67197,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20087\/revisions\/67197"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}